Designers Think Apple's New Flat iOS Look Is 'Ugly' and 'Harsh' and Blinding

Designers Think Apple's New Flat iOS Look Is 'Ugly' and 'Harsh' and Blinding

After years of complaints about Apple's cheesy, outdated, and decidedly "skeuomorphic" iPhone software look, the company and its geek design god Johnny Ive have unveiled iOS 7 and, well, nobody in the design-geek set really likes it. Well, not nobody:The Wall Street Journal, that arbiter of cool, called it "cool." And the Apple-obsessed blogger John Gruber wrote a whole post praising Ive's new vision for the iPhone. But even he admits "iOS 7 is not perfect," justifying his conclusion because "this new design framework will evolve and improve over time." Not everyone was so forgiving. Here's why not.

It's Inconsistent

Yes, Apple's icons have a "flatter" look, as promised. Some would even say the phone has "depth." But it's almost as if Apple got the memo about ditching skeuomorphism — many a joke was made during Monday's Worldwide Developers Confference keynote about faux leader and felt — but didn't pay any attention to the other grips. "Inconsistent" is a word that comes up a lot in the early discussions of the new software. "I was surprised when the screenshots started showing up. Inconsistent look and feel. Harsh colors. No harmony. No core theme," writes The Verge's Joshua Topolsky in a scathing review. To give one example, Ryan Katkov, a designer for Life 360, points us to the new icons for Safari and Mail. "Safari's icon — what were they thinking? The gradient goes from light to dark. Contrast that to Mail's icon, which goes from dark to light, and also sits on a filled background. Why?"

The Icons Don't Match

"Am I alone in thinking the iOS 7 home screen icons look ugly, poorly balanced, and of an unattractive color palate?" asks Circa CEO Matt Galligan. No, he's not. But beyond a little shading, the app icons just don't go together. "Game Center is now a collection of3D globs, rendered together against a white background, while the Camera icon recalls something more like clip-art — an icon that seems to want to be more abstract than it is, set against a rudimentary gray gradient," writes Topolsky at The Verge. In general, the new iPhone home screen icons, pictured at right, don't really match each other, as you can see. Like Topolsky says, Photos and Game Center kind of have a thing going on with their overlapping colors, though even those two don't quite match with slightly different shading. But then everything else just goes in a candy-colored kaleidoscopic direction. The Safari icon just went for ugly.

Does It Matter?

Apple apologists say no: "The result shows that in some ways Apple’s software design has gotten better, because it was Jobs (and Forstall) who had a penchant for exuberant textures and gimmickry," writes Gruber. The harshest critics say yes: "I believe Ive did exactly what Google did. Relied on data instead of instincts, because he didn’t trust his own design instincts," writes Katkov. "His hallmark is product design. You can't apply product design principles to human interface design, they're two different paradigms entirely." But it's Apple, so, you know, back in reality, the consumers will decide when iOS 7 is widely available "this fall."